Internet-Enabled Connected TV Devices in Place in Nearly 60 Percent of Homes, Neilsen Says

A whopping 58.7 percent of TV homes in the U.S. now own at least one Internet-enabled device capable of streaming to a TV set, according to Nielsen’s Q2 2017 Total Audience Report. The emergence of such devices is satiating consumers’ desire to access content with the press of a button.

Never have viewers had so many options to connect to streaming content on their television set. Whether it be an enabled multimedia device (such as an Apple TV, Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV or Roku), game console, or smart TV, nearly 70 million TV households in the U.S. have access to at least one. In fact, the penetration for such devices has grown by 12 percent since June 2016.

Like their overall media habits, consumers seemingly like to have a buffet of options when it comes to their Internet-enabled devices. Of the 69.5 million TV homes with at least an enabled multimedia device, game console, or smart TV, 6.5 million of them have access to all three. Smart TVs in particular are increasingly approaching ubiquity and becoming more accessible to the average consumer, as one-third of TV homes now have one of these conveniently internet-enabled television sets.

Once thought of as mechanisms used solely to play the latest video game release, internet-enabled game consoles (a subset of all game consoles) have become a key platform through which consumers can stream the latest SVOD content. Such devices can now be found in at least 39 million TV homes—over one-third of all TV homes.

Overall, more than a quarter of all TV homes (about 31 million) have at least two devices with the ability to stream content on a TV screen. A common profile of these high-tech homes is emerging as well. Homes with internet-enabled devices tend to be young, employed and affluent—characteristics that marketers and advertisers crave in an audience.

Nearly half of enabled-device homes are under the age of 45. Enabled-device homes are more likely to have children and have a median income of about $70.5K. About 76% of such homes have people in the workforce, a majority of which work in white-collar occupations. When looking at race/ethnicity, such homes also have a larger proportion of Hispanics and Asian Americans.

(For more information, visit http://www.nielsen.com).